Critical views and public policy

First of all, letâs examine the forebears of combative graphic design. This way of thinking about graphic design as a means of disrupting realities â its own realities, and those of the world â originated as part of the modernist project of the early 20th century: a critical questioning of the established order, aspiring towards bright revolutionary futures.
Clearly, at that time, no one talked about graphic design. Anything to do with scriptural imagery was included in the project for a total artwork, an aestheticisation of life itself. LĂĄszlĂł Moholy-Nagy was able to declare: âthe most modern art is truly a way of lifeâ2 and in this climate, Theo Van Doesburg, El Lissitzky and Hans Richter posed constructivist art as âan organisational method for life in generalâ.3 The construction of the political revolution was first played out on an aesthetic level, as a âlifestyleâ â a way of experiencing things, the social fabric and its organisation.
In the 1980s, particularly in France, through the impetus of the Grapus group, a form of critical protest was found in a mode of graphic design that was then becoming institutionalised, and that was held to be of public or social utility. It was considered to be a harmonising agent that would provide a certain âcommunity perceptionâ, but also a public service that brought a certain disinterested quality â or an interest in the greater good â to this shared visual culture, which was opposed to advertising. This program of âelitism for allâ4 offered citizens a tool for improving perception, for increasing their lucidity and perspicacity. This tool contributed to putting democrats and republicans on their guard, in the hopes that, in keeping with the modernist movement, this rousing ability of the âregime of sensationâ â otherwise known as aesthetics â may have some kind of effect on our ways of thinking about the city.

The writer and the critic

The aestheticisation of everyday life at work in the modern critical imagination was based on the more or less codified figure of the author or hero/herald, the only figure able to offer to an evolving public space a language that was capable of providing a tried and tested inventiveness. Following the Bauhaus tradition, the author was an industrious figure: authors were architects, photographers, typographers and so on. In France, at the time of the Ăcoles de Paris, and the Grapus group, but also the time of a whole poster tradition and a moment of vital expressiveness, the graphic design author was considered to be a kind of heir to the painter, or, as in the case of Massin5 , the filmmakerâs heir. In any case, authors created images.
In popularising the notion of critical graphic design, Zak Kyes suggests a return for our discipline â still suffering from a lack of recognition â to the origins of the authorial figure. Kyes positions himself effectively as a writer-graphic designer. In other words, as a graphic designer who (as the name itself suggests) needs to write his projects: a man of letters, a director, an intellectual etc.6
The effort of writing, pedagogy and explanation, but also the practice of anthologising, of producing graphic novels or sharing an editorial line â in short, the practice of graphic design as writing â became a new way of affirming this discipline as a go-between, as a centre and a (living) environment for intellectual matters, for this overall judgement otherwise known as âcritiqueâ.
Critical graphic designers concern themselves with writing, scripting and analysing their trade: they qualify it, which also means attributing a certain quality to it. In this sense, the role is similar to that of all critics, that is, professionals who are authorised to judge intellectual productions.
By publishing articles on their work, by organising exhibitions about their profession, critical graphic designers thus become commissaires (the very police-related term in French) or curators (the more âsanitaryâ English term), or, at any rate, they adopt the requisite role for assisting in obtaining recognition for the discipline.

Critique of the text and of information

The graphic designer who gives right of citizenship to his or her profession, who explains it, defends it and attributes intellectual and cultural value to it, is reviving 17th century values, in a certain sense. This period witnessed the emergence of the man of letters, who was thenceforth responsible for his writing, and the typographer-printer, who was also often a bookseller â that is, a publisher â another designation, characterising the figure endowed with the right to publish, to make public.
The writer-graphic designer calls for an explicit enhancement of the text, the typography, which we might say represents an autonomous territory of the discipline, a site of consubstantiality between image and text, a historical instrument for the emancipation of peoples and individuals.
As their etymology indicates, editing and publication â which are so dynamic today â
present values of public utility. From its origins, text has been the site of a revolution in access to knowledge, offering transmission, but also discussion, dialogue, memory, controversy and collective intelligence.
Using writing as a means of thinking about graphic design also means thinking about a form of graphic design that is capable of self-analysis. In general terms, criticism reflects the overall task of comprehension: structure, analysis, systems and programmes. Graphic design that is proposed under the aegis of the critical attitude is a form of graphic design that is well thought out, self-reflexive and methodical, which, in the triumphant digital age, sources its strategies from the attitudes that became forms â often highly textual ones â inherited from the conceptual and informational forms of the 1960s and 70s.

Authorial politics

The critic is a special kind of writer â not exactly an author, or in any case, a distanciated one: a mediator, go-between or guide, critics provide a framework. They orientate judgements with respect to content that remains exterior to their role. They comment upon such content. It is quite easy to see the connection to the translator-, interpreter- and sometimes composer-graphic designer, who may imagine themselves to be authors.
In terms of authorial qualities, critics are authority figures entitled to pass appreciations and deliver criteria, the ones who propose values as they make their evaluations. In this role, we find a point of comparison with our graphic designer, who is responsible for collective representations. The graphic designer is related to the artist conjuror (« prestigiditateur »)/praestigiator or juggler that Alexandra Midal spoke of, reminding us of the old common Latin root that made illusionists the specialists of the social charm known as âprestigeâ.7 It is because they are authoritative but also authorised â or seek to be â that we allow graphic designers to grant those who seek it access to prestige, by deciding/appraising â âkrineinâ in Greek covers both verbs â the evocations deemed appropriate. We appreciate what is appreciated. We regard highly what is held in esteemâŠ
However, in texts, the authority associated with the critic also assumes a certain distance. Its authority does not stem from the paternal figure so explicit in the painterâs signature; it is closer to the vital, technical and relational âauthor-functionâ that Michel Foucault describes.8 In accordance with the Greek origins of its name â âkrisisâ: separation â the critic is the one who identifies, attributes and indexes. The one who links a text to presences, intentions and generations. The one who situates it in relation to other texts, genres or regions of history â in terms of history with or without a capital âHâ.
The critic is the authority figure that guides the singular experience of the encounter between a text and a reader, that is, the critic redefines the notion of the author by reworking it. Rather than siding with authority, critics situate this role on the authorisation side, that of co-authoriality, sharing in the invention of the text.

âUncorporateâ and critical graphic design

âCriticalâ is also the name of a an attentive quality that language may give rise to by working its subject matter towards a sense of otherness or strangenessâŠ Working on text in a critical sense â even if this âtextâ is in fact an image â also means bringing it to a critical state, a breaking point at which something new or a âdifference that makes all the differenceâ may be identified.
However, even if it is critical, part of the content of their work escapes graphic designers. Graphic designers co-produce the meaning that will ultimately be created. They may initiate all or part of the project, accept or refuse the commission proposed to them. But, in the strictest sense, their mission consists of developing a âsecond textâ in the design elements that relays, guides and translates an initial formulation: a commissioned programming that is not necessarily based on a âcritical senseâ, or a transformative dynamic, far from itâŠ
An exciting course explicitly entitled âCritical graphic designâ, led by Vinca Kruk and Thomas BuxĂł at the ArtEZ in Arnhem, comes to mind. Their pedagogy asks its students to think about current cultural, sociological and political events, not only through graphic design, but also through their choice of content. Graphic design thus acts as an agent of cultural studies. Its approach is very typographical, textual and editorial. It concerns itself with procedures, attitudes and programs. It stands out in an often abrupt and intriguing way.
It actively sides with information, innovation and openness, as opposed to redundancy, complacency or authority.
Vinca Kruk also works with Daniel van der Velden in the Metahaven studio in Amsterdam, which is self-described as critical, as âuncorporateâ. The duo recently offered its services to WikiLeaks, the new digital precentor for freedom of expression. They proposed a strong and intelligent visual identity, which has not as yet existed to my knowledge, beyond the picture rails of design exhibitions, academic study topics and WikiLeaksâs conferences.
We may therefore sense the arrival of the armoured cavalry of certain tropes of graphic design criticism, such as the categorical oppositions between art and design, or questions of form versus contentâŠ since what is at stake here is the problem of a social or political form of graphic design that does not really exist in public space and does not respond to actual commissions. Can it still be known as purely âgraphic designâ and not simply (and magnificently) as âartâ? Then there is also the difficulty of precisely situating where this critical tool lies. Must we look for it in concepts and systems, intelligent in their ability to connect with others and attract attention, or rather in the causes that are being explicitly served or communicated? Doesnât the âeditorial contentâ chosen by these self-initiated projects become a part of the graphic language itself?
These last remarks allow me to at least attempt to answer the question posed. The critical dimension of graphic design can perhaps only be fully established within its own regimes, within its visual matter: its forms that are also ideas and its content as form. The graphic designerâs ethical and political responsibility is first and foremostly engaged in this more or less formalised grammar that encodes its language. I do not know if graphic design per se is all that useful or has its place in transmitting something explicitly critical about the state of the worldâŠ It is because certain graphic design practices can be translated by languages that bring about a certain shift in perception that we may speak of a critical tool. Such languages are capable of provoking crises for certain representations, or of opening up to the presence of a spectator or reader that is authorised to experiment with them and partially invent them.
In other words, even if we may hope that the critical spirit of our imaginations may reflect on our lived realities, graphic design can only serve as a critical tool once it has become a critical graphic design.